Free Republic

It's been a rough summer for generals in Cuba. They are dropping like flies, as we see in this report:Over just nine days this month, Cuban state media announced the deaths of five generals, sparking a wave of discussion and rampant speculation among analysts and exiles.The senior military leaders all appear to have died between July 17 and 26. Some were serving and others retired, but all had lauded military careers. The youngest was 58. Most were in their 70s or 80s. It is not clear what caused the deaths, and there is no indication they were related.The deaths of...

Peru’s new president Pedro Castillo, 51, deserves credit for vowing to focus his government on improving the lives of the country’s poverty-stricken indigenous population. But his first steps in office raise fears that he will scare away investors, generate capital flight and — after a short-lived populist fiesta — create more poverty. Castillo, a leftist former elementary school teacher who had never before held public office, assumed the presidency on July 28 after winning the runoff elections with a razor-thin 0.3 percent of the vote. He controls only 37 seats in the 130-member Congress. Some hoped that Castillo’s minority in...

A big problem arrived in Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’s email inbox on the afternoon of Nov. 16, 2021. It was a legal notice from an attorney representing Amanda Timpson, a former member of Willis’s executive staff who had been blowing the whistle on the district attorney’s office for allegedly trying to mishandle federal grant funds. Willis, the eight-page letter stated, had violated a slew of whistleblower protection laws when she reassigned Timpson to serve as a glorified file clerk following a brief meeting in July 2021 in which the district attorney refused to hear Timpson’s allegations. Timpson believed...

Heavily armed criminal groups have moved in the past month to residential and commercial areas from slums in the city’s hills, and violence has exploded over the past 24 hours with firefights breaking out in at least five populous neighborhoods. President Nicolás Maduro’s government has not mentioned any casualties as a result of the clashes. Human rights activists in the area have said at least four civilians were killed on Wednesday and half a dozen have been wounded. The gangs want to control one of the main corridors linking the capital with the west of the country, said a human...

A Lewis and Clark statue featuring Sacagawea (also spelled Sacajawea), a famous Native American woman, was taken down in Charlottesville, Virginia, making it the third statue to be taken down in the city. The statue is of two White men – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark – and Sacagawea, who was depicted tracking, according to historians. Those against the statue have said Sacagawea appears to be cowering, according to The Daily Progress newspaper. “It was a very offensive statue, and not only did it delineate me as a Native American, it delineated our women and their role in society,” said...

Shocking bodycam footage revealed the moment Texas police officers shot a man in the head with pepper bullets as he sat on the grass outside of a cemetery. Guadalupe County officers were seen in the footage on June 27, 2021, approaching now 44-year-old Ronald Smith, who was sat cross-legged on the grass, with weapons held out in front of them pointed at Smith. Smith's attorney, Andres Cano, told DailyMail.com: 'He's waiting for his wife to come get him and he sees this [guy] running across with a gun pointed at him, yelling shrieking, shouting.' 'Within ten seconds, another one rolls...

Federal authorities won't explain why three men who participated in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, have mysteriously disappeared from the FBI's Capitol Violence Most Wanted list. One unidentified man wore an earpiece during the riot and was filmed carrying what appeared to be a concealed handgun on his left hip. The man was pictured on the FBI's most wanted list for over five months until he was removed without explanation on the same day the New York Times reported an FBI informant was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. A second unidentified man was filmed beating police officers...

A Coptic Orthodox church in British Columbia was destroyed in a fire on Monday, July 19, just days after an attempted arson attack damaged the church’s door. Local police said they were alerted to a fire at St. George Coptic Orthodox Church in Surrey around 3:17 a.m. on Monday. By the time the fire was extinguished, the building was almost entirely demolished and only a single wall was left standing. No one was reported injured in the fire. “While today is a day of sadness, we will not be deterred and we will rebuild,” said Bishop Mina of the Coptic...

Ukraine's long-awaited attempt to take back the territories in the east and south of the country, occupied by Russia for the past 18 months, is now in full swing. A key figure in planning and executing this operation is Gen Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's 49-year-old commander-in-chief. Little known until recently, his popularity now rivals that of President Volodymyr Zelensky. Gen Zaluzhny, or "our Valera" as friends and old classmates like to call him, was appointed commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian military in July 2021. (snip) Within seven months he was leading Ukraine's defence against full-scale invasion. (snip) The commander-in-chief became a national...

The Maryland manufacturer that ruined 75 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine has received requests to hand over records from a host of federal and state law enforcement agencies, regulatory documents filed Friday show. The company, Emergent BioSolutions, disclosed that it had received “preliminary inquiries and subpoenas to produce documents” from the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the attorneys general of Maryland and New York and committees in both houses of Congress. The disclosure suggests broadening scrutiny of the politically connected company, which received a $628 million federal contract to be...

The internal Department of Agriculture (USDA) communications — obtained by Americans for Public Trust (APT) and shared with Fox News Digital — show that Kessler was involved in initiatives to "transform" the U.S. food system and to crack down on the meat industry for high prices. Kessler was the only individual on the email chains who wasn't affiliated with the USDA. "These emails reveal that Eric Kessler has direct access to Biden cabinet officials and plays an intimate role in shaping this administration’s agenda," APT executive director Caitlin Sutherland told Fox News Digital. "As the architect and operator of the...

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged four Iranian nationals over an alleged plot to kidnap a Brooklyn-based journalist and human rights activist who published material critical of the Iranian government. A superseding indictment from the U.S. District Court from the Southern District of New York was unsealed Tuesday, revealing charges against an Iranian intelligence official, Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, as well as "Iranian intelligence assets" Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori.

Both CNN and the Washington Post reported yesterday that the Iranian regime is plotting to kill President Trump. Jewish World Review has posted the Washington Post story in accessible form here. Intelligence concerning the plot derives from a human source and is apparently unrelated to the attempted assassination of Trump over the weekend.NRO’s Jimmy Quinn quotes Rich Goldberg’s tweet on the rationale for such an operation: “Donald Trump is an existential threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime knows maximum pressure will return.”The incompetence of the Secret Service presents something of a national security crisis. The Post drily...

London (PTI) -- Anjem Choudary, a radical Islamist preacher with dual British and Pakistani nationality, was on Tuesday jailed for life with a minimum term of 28 years behind bars by a UK court for directing a terrorist organisation.Choudary, 57, had been found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of directing Al-Muhajiroun (ALM) and encouraging support for the proscribed organisation through online meetings. Sentencing him at the same court to a prison term means he would be in his 80s by the time he can seek parole. Justice Mark Wall told Choudary his behaviour was of the “highest culpability”. “Organisations such...

A college professor suspected in a series of arson fires in remote forested areas of Northern California near the massive Dixie Fire has been charged in connection with one of the blazes in Lassen County and was ordered held Tuesday in the Sacramento County Main Jail. Gary Stephen Maynard, 47, is believed to have worked at a number of colleges in California, including Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, where a Dr. Gary Maynard is listed as a lecturer in criminal justice studies specializing in criminal justice, cults and deviant behavior. ...Maynard was arrested Saturday following an investigation that...

A former college professor has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison over a string of arson fires in Northern California in 2021 as fire crews were battling the second-largest fire in the state’s history. Gary Stephen Maynard, 49, of San Jose, pleaded guilty in February to three arson counts in connection to fires in the Shasta National Forest and near the Dixie Fire in the Lassen National Forest. The Dixie Fire burned over 1,500 square miles after igniting on July 13 and destroyed over 1,000 homes. Maynard was accused of setting fires behind firefighters battling the...

Tax documents for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and for a major foundation funded by leftist billionaire George Soros show the organization that purports to represent the U.S. business community has turned hard left in recent years.The Tides Foundation’s public filings from 2018 to 2022 show the Soros-funded organization has given more than $12 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation over that five-year span. In 2018, the Tides Foundation gave the Chamber’s foundation $450,000. In 2019, Tides gave the Chamber group $1,450,000. It gave another $100,000 in 2020, followed by $10 million in 2021 and another $175,885...

The crisis in Cuba has seen its government approach the United Nations for aid to address its food shortage, as residents take to the streets in a rare sign of social unrest Cuba is "on the verge of total collapse" as the country has been hit by blackouts with residents taking to the streets calling for "food and power". The crisis has seen the Cuban government approach the United Nations for aid to address its food shortage. As the Caribbean island goes through its harshest economic crisis in three decades, the communist regime is resorting to hitherto unseen cries for...

In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy...

A man who planned to kill a Christian preacher at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park has been jailed for a minimum of 16 years. Edward Little, 22, conducted research into firearms, the location of the planned attack, and his intended target.